Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Here they were picked up by some envoys journeying to the court of Kublai Khan—who offered to take them with them, assuring them that the great Prince would be overjoyed to receive them, since he had never seen a European in his life.

They spoke no more than the truth, for when, after months of hard travel over the steppes and through the hot, arid, pungent dust—the days as hot as fire itself, the nights, as often as not, bitterly chill—the two hardy brothers arrived at the Khan’s Capital, he received them with great honour and placed everything of his at their service, as though they were brother Princes. A gentle-mannered, polite, very imaginative person they found him, with an unlit fire of religious feeling, to which their devout Catholicism very soon put a match. A wise man—one may well say a great one—the empty idolatry of his own people could have no attraction for him, and when the two brothers, at his earnest request, expounded to him some of the leading tenets of Christianity, he was so struck with its ideals that he begged them to take a petition to the Pope, that His Holiness would send him a hundred men—wise men—versed in the uses of argument and capable of converting his Tartars by convincing their reason in the matter; a task for wise men, indeed, when the reason of the average Tartar is taken into consideration, unless the Khan intended to supplement their efforts by making an appeal of his own to other of their senses.

The two brothers started on their return journey by themselves, carrying with them a passport in the shape of a golden tablet on which the Prince’s injunctions to whomsoever it might be shown were carved. Three years it took the adventurous pair to arrive at Acre, one of the last outposts of civilisation, when they were told that the Pope was dead.

Having been informed by the legate that there was little chance of a Pope’s being elected for a long time to come, and, seeing that only to a Pope could the petition be delivered, they cast about for some way to fill in the time, and bethought them of Venice. Neither of them had paid their native state a visit in fifteen years, and Marco, it appears, had a child there. His wife was probably dead, though it is impossible to be sure of it, and Marco’s heart was naturally moved at the prospect of an entirely new experience, that of holding his own child in his arms.

So to Venice they repaired, and in the pleasures of renewing their acquaintance with old-time friends, and bathing in the comforts and delights of civilisation, the Khan and his business gradually faded from their minds. The election of a new Pope seemed to be as far away as ever, too, and the whole world of the church was divided into camps, with no prospect that any one could see of a solution of the trouble.

It must be explained that the Emperor had taken it into his autocratic heart, at that time, to elect a Pope of his own, and force recognition from the rule of Christianity in the usual fashion if his presumption were resented.

As time went by the explorers’ hearts began to get restless again, for that fever never leaves its victims alone for long, and their imaginations turned to the East, where the Khan was still waiting for them; with that, it appears, their religious instincts awoke again, and the business of converting the Tartars became the most important thing in the world to them.

In a very short while they were once more in Acre, where they had another interview with the Legate Tibaldo di Piacenza, who was soon to move from Acre to the throne of Peter (as Gregory), from whom they obtained a document which should explain to Kublai Khan the impossibility of satisfying his wishes in the absence of a supreme authority.

They had got no further than Armenia when they were overtaken by messengers from Tibaldo, announcing his election and bidding them come to Acre, where he would do what he could in the matter of the desired mission.

So to Acre they returned; but Gregory could not find anything like a hundred wise men who were willing to undertake such an errand, and, since he needed all of such that he could find near him just then, the Emperor having by no means relinquished his ambitions, he compromised by despatching a couple of Dominicans.